Blender Mayonnaise

Julia Child gives us a recipe for making mayonnaise in the blender, but that doesn't mean she approves of it. She goes so far as to say "no culinary skill whatsoever enters into its preparation." Ouch! Despite this admonition, I still almost burnt out the engine on my blender and ultimately switched to finishing it with the hand mixer, so I'm not sure what that says about me.

I tried it in the blender, not because I am avoiding achieving mastery of the egg yolk. On the contrary, I want very much to lord over the egg yolk. But after my most recent debacle with the "I Know How to Cook" mayo recipe, my friend Lala suggested I try it in the blender and that it is just a snap. I thought I might as well give it a shot so that I could at least disdain it as "too easy" with the same authority as Julia. Sigh.

Assemble the Players:

1 whole egg
1/4 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tb lemon juice or wine vinegar (I opted for vinegar)
1 cup olive oil or vegetable oil (I used olive oil)

Break the egg into the blender jar. Add the mustard and salt. Cover and blend at top speed for 30 seconds, or until the mixture is thick and foamy. 

 

Pour in the lemon juice or vinegar, and blend for 10 seconds.

Take the center lid out and pour the oil into it, while blending at high speed. Be sure to pour the oil in slowly in a very thin stream of droplets. I use this ketchup dispenser with a very narrow nose that I got at the 99¢ store.

 

Supposedly the sauce will begin to thicken after about 1/2 cup of the oil has been added. However, after about 1/4 cup my blender started to smell and make unpleasant sounds, and when I took it off it looked like this:

 

This didn't seem like a good thing. So I poured it into a bowl, crossed my fingers that a hybrid technique would work and plugged in the hand mixture. After about 30 minutes of gentle coaxing and painstakingly slow oil addition and eventually raising to top speed the sauce began to thicken. Ultimately it wasn't quite as thick as I would want, and I didn't need to take any of the recommended  thinning measures, but it was mayonnaise nonetheless. 

 

I am often perplexed as to why such seemingly simple tasks elude me, but it looks like I am going to stick with the original method and hope for the day when mastery is achieved and I can whip this up in 10 minutes as Julia promises.